The tater trots for June 5: Wilson Ramos gives us *a lot* of drama with his slow trot; Albert Pujols hits back-to-back walkoff home runs.

I usually do my best to keep abreast of the day's goings on in the baseball world (through Twitter and whatnot) so that I don't accidentally miss something home run-related when I watch through the videos. There are times, though, when I don't get a chance to do that and, as such, go into the home run videos pretty blind only to discover some pretty interesting things happened. Sunday was a day like that.

It's a series that will feature superb pitching staffs, and one team will come away with a long-awaited title.

In baseball as in literature, archetypes tend to be formulaic, proof that fiction falls short of reality when it comes to the power to describe any one thing in shorthand. The need, indeed one of the great benefits of the human mind is to identify patterns, and to peg things that fall within those patterns, or to re-evaluate the pattern as a whole to create some new rubric, some new way of explaining things. Take our current post-season slate: instead of a much-anticipated rematch between the Evil Empire and the Phillies' a-bornin' senior-circuit dynasty, last week we got the pleasure of witnessing imperial ambitions utterly overthrown in both leagues.

The Rangers' director of player development talks about some of the organization's top young players.

The Rangers are one win away from the World Series, and they wouldn’t be where they are without the contributions of young talent raised on the Texas farm. Several key players are homegrown, including a pair of 22-year-olds, Elvis Andrus and Neftali Feliz, who arrived via trade but blossomed under the watchful eye of Rangers director of player development Scott Servais. Servais talked about the club’s precocious youngsters, and the Texas youth movement, prior to Game Five.

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This time of year, you get to say things like "the Yankees have won every series they've played" and not have to think too hard about the reasons why. But with two wins against the Rangers already booked, they were gunning for a sweep before setting out for next week's West Coast swing through Oakland and Anaheim. Already at 8-3 and close to the Twinsfor the highest Hit List factor in the league, they were closing out their fourth straight series against an expected contender, having played the Red Sox, Rays, and Angels previously.

Echoes of past Rookie of the Year selections combined with metrics both new and old to inform a particular ballot.

A vote. A vote? A vote.

Being invited to help select this year's American League Rookie of the Year as a new member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America was an unexpected honor, and one I took seriously. By way of process, I started off with a day spent digging up data to inform my sense of who to rank, and where, and why. Then, I spent a day or two caucusing with a quartet of colleagues, inside Baseball Prospectus and out, and putting various arguments through the ringer, and using a variety of tacks, from devil's advocate to fully faithful, and everywhere in between.